Hobbies That Will Make You More Intelligent

Following on from https://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.com/2018/12/9-types-of-intelligence-infographic.html, Alison Courses recently put together a list of eight hobbies that will make you smarter. https://alison.com/messages/1466/8-hobbies-that-make-you-smarter-according-to-science- I have summarised the article below, while also adding in my own thoughts.

1. Photography. Altering various components in order to capture the right picture aids problem solving and sensory awareness. Editing photos can also be a challenging pass time that connects several different aspects of intellect and creativity.

2. Gardening. Soil bacteria releases serotonin in the brain, boosting positive feelings and learning. It is also good exercise (see below) while often requiring research and creativity in design.

3. Learning Music. Our brains constantly look for patterns to overcome problems, something which music learning aids us in doing. Learning music also takes high levels of both concentration and memory, while making your own music stimulates creativity.

4. Reading Literature. Gains intellectual and emotional stability through 'deep reading'.

5. Language Learning. Improves leadership, problem solving and planning skills that enhance creativity and intelligence.

6. Exercise Regularly. Stimulates proteins in the body that boost memory, learning, concentration and understanding.

7. Quizzes. Improve both subject specific knowledge and brain activity.

8. Meditation. Brain waves of monks in meditation shown to reach 'deeply compassionate state' where they could control brain activity.

To add to their list I suggest the following:

9. Arts and Crafts Like photography only perhaps involving even more aspects of intelligence. Arts use spatial, sensory and motor skills in mixing colour and shape to design and create. Painting, drawing, sculpting, making or computerised design requires a lot of brain power!

10. Puzzles. A bit like quizzes above. Crosswords, Sudoku, anagrams etc. Stimulate brain function through problem solving in logical, linguistic, maths, language and other subject specific themes.

11. Cooking. It takes a combination of several intelligence 'ingredients' to cook well, often while multi-tasking. From researching different recipes or specific diets, to mixing aspects of taste, colour, smells and textures in order to design unique creations, cooking uses tablespoons of creative grey matter, as well as elements of spatial, naturalist and intra-personal intelligence. 

12. Video Games. Many people on the street will tell you video games are making children less intelligent. I don't necessarily agree. If used in the correct way, in proportional amounts, I am an avid believer that interactive tech, such as video games, can be more intellectually stimulating than reading a book. They are more multifaceted, including reading, looking at pictures, videos, sounds and touch, while they can also be very social as games now link people all across the globe interactively. Like books, there are video games now about every subject matter you can think of, so potentially you can find video games that concentrate on any type of intelligence.

13. Travel. Is travel a hobby? Debatable. But travel means you encounter new places, people, language and scenarios plus experiencing the logistics of successfully moving yourself, your belongings and possibly your group around. You will learn intra-personal, interpersonal, linguistic and spatial skills in particular.

14. Sports. I would be tempted to group this with 'exercise'. Sports give you all the benefits of exercise while in addition including several cognitive and social challenges in playing competitively and/or in teams. Learning and teaching new techniques, adjusting training, tactics and strategy to aid performance, multi-tasking... there is a lot of cognition in sports. Lots of major sportspeople are labelled 'dumb' in the media, but I would say at least in some aspects of the spectrum top sports stars are off the scale in areas such as spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

Have I missed anything from the list? Which hobbies do you think are best for boosting intelligence?


See also https://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.com/2013/08/25-ways-to-make-yourself-more.html

https://www.betterhelp.com/online-therapy/

Adolescent Online Counselling

The Problem

Being young can be incredibly challenging. Adolescents can have all the problems an adult might experience with the added bonus of the raging emotional turmoil of teenage hormones, plus a very volatile social environment where in-group/out-group themes can feel like everything. At that age you don't know its normal to feel up and down and its likely you don't really understand why you feel the way you do.

On the extreme end of the spectrum, Japan has seen a thirty year high in youth suicide https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46096626  while there have been recent similarly concerning findings in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/04/suicide-rate-rises-among-young-people-in-england-and-wales

Adolescents can feel angry, depressed, scared, lonely, frustrated and very much in need to talk to someone - but talking to someone they know could be the very last thing they would want to do for a variety of reasons. They can feel embarrassed or ashamed to own up to their problems, too emotionally insecure to put such trust in someone close to them. Teens can readily feel the pressure of expectation from family, friends and school, networks that should exist to help them can end up having an opposite, negative effect.

How Can Counselling Help?

Counselling and advice services can provide help to teens by supporting them in a confidential, non-judgemental and near anonymous format. Services can take the form of face-to-face counselling, phone calls or online through webchat, email or forums.

Counselling is the most common form of talking therapy and can help young people deal with their issues and the impact they have been making upon their mental wellbeing. The counsellor will help explore the individual's problems and symptoms, and will aim to develop coping strategies to use in future scenarios.

Counselling can address a wide range of problems from anxiety, depression, bullying, relationships and self-harm, but is not recommended for more serious mental conditions which require more specialised treatment plans.

Different Types of Counselling

https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/for-parents/parents-guide-to-support-a-z/parents-guide-to-support-counselling-services/ names these different types of counselling:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
The approach of CBT is about thinking more positively about life, looking at  how you can get stuck in patterns of behaviour and ways of changing these rather than dwelling on past events. There are typically six or 12 weekly sessions and the therapist sets goals with the young person, often with ‘homework’ to do in between.

Mindfulness
Mindfulness is often combined with CBT and helps a young person to focus on difficult thoughts and feeling, rather than avoiding them, so that the fear of them gradually lessens. Therapists can also include meditation, yoga and breathing exercises.

Psychotherapy
This is a more long-term therapy and involves talking about the effects of past events and can be more helpful with long-term problems such as depression or eating disorders. NHS psychotherapists work in clinics or hospitals; some private psychotherapists work from home.

Family Therapy
The whole family works with the family therapist to try and understand the problems they are all having. It can help improve communications between family members and issues such as children’s behavioural problems, disability, family breakdown, addiction and domestic violence.

Online Counselling

The modern adolescent is very much at home with using technology in the form of smart phones/social media to communicate. With this in mind https://www.teencounseling.com/ has developed a system whereby teens receive counselling over their smart phones in webchat style forums, ideal for individuals who struggle to open up in a face to face environment.

9 Types of Intelligence Infographic

We often hear references to different types of intelligence, how x person has a y type of intelligence and how that relates to their personality. This info-graphic courtesy of https://blog.adioma.com/9-types-of-intelligence-infographic/ really makes a wonderful succinct summary of the different intelligence types.

Where would you place yourself?

Top 10 Hypnosis Trends 2019

Like any good form of therapy Hypnotherapy must adapt with the field in order to both survive and thrive. https://hypnosistrainingacademy.com/hypnosis-trends-2017/ have produced an excellent article naming the top 10 hypnosis trends for 2017. As we approach 2019, this article aims to analyse these trends and perhaps predict which direction future trends may lead us.

1. Traditional Treatments are Evolving. The article talks about virtual gastric band vs surgery, and the emergence of vaping and its potential problems.

My previous article Vaping vs Smoking discusses some of the latest thoughts on vaping as it is currently a very hot topic with the great number of people taking up e-cigs and other alternatives to smoking without solid long-term research to say that it is completely safe. I think its a very good bet to say that stop-vaping services will be sought after increasingly in the years to come, and its something I get asked about regularly in my clinics at the moment.

At present there is no official stop vaping service in the UK, while typically stop smoking aids and medications are designed only for burning tobacco products, despite vaping being a highly addictive and potentially harmful habit taken up by a huge number of people. A stop vaping hypnotic service could therefore be a very useful service for the present and future. 

2. Mental Health Services. It is noted that although public/media perception to mental health has recently shifted to something acceptable for open discussion, public funding has continued to be cut. The most recent UK budget has set aside increased funds for mental health services however, presumably as it makes perfect sense to treat problems early before they become more serious. CBT is being used with greater frequency to treat common issues such as anxiety and depression for this reason. 

We know that self-hypnosis techniques alone can greatly aid anxiety and personal well being. Will preventative services further latch on to the effects of hypnotherapy in the future? It very much depends on how research develops but I think it is an excellent idea worth exploring further.

3. Links with conventional Medicine. Studies indicate that hypnosis can be used for various medical purposes, such as pain management, recovery from surgery, childbirth and IBS. With medical services continuing to be stretched, costs forever increasing and demand from patients not wanting medication based treatment, hypnosis can reasonably expect to play an increasing role in more wide ranging treatment plans of the future.

4. Healthy Diets. Obesity continues to rise in both adults and children, despite the healthy food craze that seems to sweep back and forth perpetually. As a result of this the author suggests there is a trend toward hypnosis to promote healthy eating.

Looking at future trends I would expand upon this to say hypnotherapy can play a role in improving healthy lifestyles in general; to include eating, activity/exercise and social habits.

I have commented before on the potential problem of social media and the screen time both adults and children now seem bound to in both work and leisure. Sedentary lifestyles, eating more processed foods coinciding with decreased 'real' social interactions can only lead to more physical/mental health issues in the future.

Society must find an answer to correcting our negative lifestyle patterns. If hypnosis can aid us eating well, getting regular good exercise and interacting socially then perhaps that answer is right in front of us.

5. Closing The Gap Between The 4 Streams of Hypnotists. The four branches are listed in the article as; the world of research and academia, hypnotists with healthcare qualifications, laymen hypnotists and stage and entertainment hypnotists. The Hypnosis Training Academy says that in the past hypnosis was considered something 'mystical', whereas nowadays for various reasons there is more acceptance and understanding of the practice which has lead to cohesion of sorts.

The author claims the gap between laymen hypnotists and hypnotists with healthcare qualifications is closing, partly due to the increase of training courses available on a widening range of topics. Similarly techniques used in entertainment such as 'hypnotic mind reading' have been taken up in hypnotherapy sessions, while well known celebrities such as Paul Mckenna who started in entertainment have switched to offer therapeutic services.

6. Advances In Research Related To Changes In The Brain. The author cites the recent study of Dr Spiegel which demonstrates how the brain alters under hypnosis, proving that hypnosis has a very real empirical effect upon the brain, and also begins to show how the subconscious mind can be manipulated under hypnosis to make changes to aspects of body such as secretions/blood flow.

As scientific research hopefully continues to demonstrate the potential of Hypnotherapy, this can only strengthen its position within society and open more and more people to the idea of hypnosis as an alternative treatment option. 

7. Change Of Emphasis From Power To Empower. The Hypnosis Training Academy say there has been a shift between the image of a hypnotist being in control of their subject to working cooperatively toward a shared goal, empowering positive change.

I would say this is not a very recent change but something that has happened over a longer period of time, and certainly hope that hypnotherapy remains an empowering experience in the future!

8. Hypnotists Are Becoming More Business-Minded. The article states that this is due to the growth of hypnotherapy the industry has had to evolve. Increased demand for hypnotherapy means there are now more hypnotists in the field, so there is a need to promote services to stand out and succeed as a business.

Also there are now more regulatory bodies which aim to set standards of hypnotherapy such as training, CPD and insurance, all with a view to make hypnotherapy more professional practice and move away from those 'mystical beginnings'.

9. Hypnosis As A Career In Later Life. As the population lives longer they are needing to work longer too. The author states that projected stats for 2022 are that 31.9% of people aged between 65 and 74 will still be working, an increase of 58% since 2002.

Due to the work having little physical demands and having the flexibility to be self employed, the article states that more people are turning to hypnotherapy as a second career choice or a career in later life.

With the population being statistically older, perhaps a future trend of hypnosis need best consider the treatment/lifestyle needs of the aged also. What will the requirements be for older people still needing to work, or longer years spent in retirement? Could hypnosis be used to improve the lives and well being of older people? Again, I firmly believe there is great potential for development here.

10. Hypnosis For Students And Its Impact On Future Generations. The Hypnosis Research Academy links research demonstrating the benefits for meditation in schools, and claim that the known benefits of hypnosis in stress reduction, behavioural issues and information retention mean that it could be a highly useful tool for future generations of students.

If all children learnt self hypnosis - what kind of effect would that have upon them growing up? The effect upon society could be massive.

Supplementary suggestions to the list...

To add to this list for future trends I feel it would be unwise to ignore the role of technology. Increased screen time can be disadvantageous as previously stated, but tech can also open doors if used in the right way. Advances to the internet and smart phones mean we can be connected to anyone across the globe without limit or financial restraint, and not just by voice conversation, but with face to face via video link.

I have conducted hypnosis successfully using these methods, and although I prefer real time patient interaction telephone consultations certainly suit some clientele. They are cost effective, remove the problem of getting to appointments, the geography divide of patient/therapist, and also remove the waiting room experience. Due to phobias and other medical issues there are a range of reasons why a patients/therapist might not want to have real time interaction - so I can only reflect upon them positively as a flexible and highly useful option for therapy.

There is 'smart' technology emerging everywhere around us at the moment from phones to watches and car seats, all linked by apps that can help us understand the way our body and mind works. A question we have to ask ourselves is how best do we use this technology to actually improve ourselves? How can hypnotherapy be used in conjunction to achieve this?

If you feel there is something missing from the list then please leave a comment to the article.

How Common Are Mental Health Problems?

How common are mental health problems? The short answer; extremely common, although it is rather difficult to quantify.

Much like physical health, mental health is complex and can be described upon a wide spectrum of 'seriousness'. A common cold is a physical illness but is it a health problem? Are issues such as mild depression/anxiety/loneliness etc therefore mental health problems?

It is a relative question of coping. If mental health issues are adversely affecting your life then, much like a physical issue, they can be considered a problem that should be addressed.

The trouble is that many of us wont think twice before seeking out a doctor for a physical ailment such as a stomach ache, but will struggle on with mental conditions without seeking help or even admitting to a problem. Ignoring such matters can make them much worse in time causing all kinds of related health problems, both to the individual and those close to them.

For these reasons there has been a recent drive in awareness of mental health issues, with the general purpose of letting the population know that mental health problems are common, that they are treatable and it is certainly acceptable to talk about them. Last week the UK government committed an extra 2 billion GBP to mental health service , we also have mental health awareness week while even the Royal Family have got in on the act. Only time will tell how effective such strategies will be, but I think the results will be hugely positive for society.

So how common are mental health issues?

In the UK a large scale study was conducted in 2016, the results of which are summarised by Mind UK, who also state that 1 in 4 adults will experience a mental health issue each year. It is worth mentioning that the study is far from perfect as it only covered those adults living in private housing, so critically does not include those vulnerable groups where mental health problems are known to be prevalent, such as the homeless, those in hospital or prison. For this reason the following stats can be considered lower than the true figure of the general populous.

What the study says

Generalised anxiety disorder: 5.9%
Depression: 3.3%
Phobias: 2.4%
OCD: 1.3%
Panic disorder: 0.6 in 100 people
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): 4.4%
Mixed anxiety and depression: 7.8%

Psychotic disorder: 0.7%
Bipolar disorder: 2.0%
Antisocial personality disorder: 3.3%
Borderline personality disorder: 2.4%

Suicidal thoughts: 20.6%
Suicide attempts: 6.7%
Self-harm: 7.3%

Mind UK report that 1 in 8 of adults in the UK with mental health problems are being treated, with medication serving as the most common form of treatment.

If we say there are roughly 50 million adults in the UK, even a 8% prevalence of mixed anxiety and depression would suggest there are 4 million adults in the UK with the mental health issue, and one could assume there are many more under the age of 18. It is also interesting to consider what is causing the 20% of suicidal thoughts.

Applying these figures to a worldwide population it is quite staggering to think how many people around the world are suffering with mental health problems that are going untreated.

It is my opinion that medication can only go some way in fully treating a mental condition and can merely paper over the cracks in many cases. Drugs can make you feel better of course, but can they alone solve the underlying causes of mental health problems? Locating and understanding the root of mental issues is a key proponent of talking therapies, along with finding life solutions and coping mechanisms applicable to the individual's life.